1BTC

I am willing to commit an entire Bitcoin to the cause. There are some things I would like answered first. This is for me a practical matter and will determine if I donate or not. I would like to know why you are not using the Time4Popcorn or PopcornTime as a base for this project to have an immediate release. There are some rather simple solutions I can think of off the top of my head to introduce new features and to compile content. For example a feature could be added which allows an individual to "Claim" content. When that person is paid for content then a % goes to that individual and a % goes to those who are hosting the file. The system could be designed to allow Seed Limiting. People could then Query into being a Seeder when another seeder drops the file. For unclaimed content the "tip" would be distributed to all Seeders. There is also a way in which the movie corporations can be invited to participate in the system. They could create a page on their sites with Bitcoin addresses linked to each movie, Bit451 could then be modified to pull this data from the site. This would encourage movie companies to actively seek participation in the system. Also the current PopcornTime could be modified to include music. Finally you could incorporate a trust system so that users could rank not only individual files but this would also be compiled into a ranking for each Seeder. How trusted are the files provided by X.

This is potentially an important project. I however do not believe that it is necessary to start from the ground up. So my question is why not use an existing program and build on top of that?

Frettsy here - great question. Under the hood, Popcorn Time actually uses peerflix, which is built on top of torrent-stream. However, peerflix has not been considered actively under development, and has passed the torch to WebTorrent. Both WebTorrent and peerflix are mentioned in the Bit451 white paper, with WebTorrent being the original recommendation for the BitTorrent-specific version of the Bit451 Portal Gateway (fancy term for "what makes the content stream"). That said, WebTorrent is not the only possible solution. And, more broadly, BitTorrent is not the only P2P file sharing network/protocol which Bit451 will tap into - we are going big! (see a partial list of additional File Transfer networks - Storj, Freenet, I2P, Tor, MaidSafe, Bitcloud, Tahoe-LAFS, Dropbox, etc are all examples of candidates).

A couple important points to note:

Popcorn Time is actually a full-fledged desktop BitTorrent client; Bit451 architecture aims to be interoperable with various P2P networks in addition to BitTorrent and, by Phase 3, fully browser-based

Bit451 won't be starting from the ground up; the majority of the project is in integrating already-existing open source projects (MediaDrop, OrientDB, and a light service based on an existing client such as Bitcoin/qBittorrent/Electrum)

Regardless, I've posted a direct link to Popcorn Time for additional discussion and feedback from Bit451 readers specifically on the matter.

Your commitment of 1 BTC would certainly go a long way towards getting this project rolling and would be greatly appreciated! Thanks so much!

Bit451 actually does not have a blockchain - instead it uses a P2P-specific distributed database architecture forked from OrientDB, an amazing open source project, which means most of the hard work there is already done and Bit451 basically just has to customize the schema.

Bit451 actually does not (at least natively) have "seeds" either, as the actual content storage/streaming is accomplished by the protocol/network (BitTorrent/Storj/etc) on which the content resides. Rather, Bit451 provides an overarching interface to access the streaming content from all of these various networks in one place. In other words, Bit451's protocol agnosticism/crossover/interoperability is one of its greatest strengths in this regard.

Regarding the idea of content payments, that is also planned for phase 3. A plugin API will be implemented which will also be coin-agnostic, allowing crypto payments for various seeding/hosting-related actions in the coin of your choice. A Reputation / trust system is also planned.